


wings and labyrinths

by thnderchld



Series: jetko renaissance week [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, I mean, M/M, and what's more queer than being viewed as a monster by society, and you know icarus is fucking gay, icarus and daedalus are literally the prisoners of KING MINOS, so i realised that timeline wise the minotaur and icarus were in the same castle at the same time, so yknow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:55:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27174832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thnderchld/pseuds/thnderchld
Summary: *Jetko Renaissance Week Day 2: Warmth* Deformed charge of King Ozai, Zuko can't remember a time where he hasn't been alone. But life changes upon witnessing the trial of a heretic from Lydia.
Relationships: Jet/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: jetko renaissance week [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983511
Comments: 2
Kudos: 26





	wings and labyrinths

**Author's Note:**

> You guys probably noticed this stuff is coming late. I'm currently at a sort of college, so I don't exactly have unlimited time. But I am so excited to see this week producing content for one of the favourite ships I have ever been privy too! A lot has happened in my life, but this brings me a very nice joy that I have missed.

  
  


“I’m going to escape today,” Jet says from the silence of his prison cell. He and Prince Zuko are sitting on the floor; between them lies a small picnic of bread and wine. It isn’t even a particularly bad prison, with a view staring out over the Aegean. But still, it has been starving him. He is holding a piece of bread soaked in olive oil. Brown curls, slightly damp with sweat, trail like wax beads along the lines of his face.

-

The first time Zuko sees the prisoner, he is in handcuffs. He and his group have been living in Knossos for a while now. He lives the life of a bachelor in a commune of ragtag youngsters doing their best to thwart military duty. His name, Zuko knows, is Jet, but there is little to say of truth or rumour. Some say he is the son of the Deserter, others say he is a son of Zeus. Not that that’s an honour, there are certainly enough of those in the world.

But no one really knows anything. All Zuko knows is that he and his group of men (and one woman) arrived in Knossos five years ago and never left. 

Oh, and one more thing. Two years ago, one of Jet’s group had been executed. Pipsqueak, they called him, had been hoisted to the top precipice of the Knossos palace and had dove swanlike to the stones below. The guards had spoken of it.

Maybe Zuko has paid attention a little bit. But he’s glad for it, because it means he knows what’s going on when Jet is hoisted before the tribunal by a pair of guards. Staring from behind the throne, Zuko watches his only entertainment; the palace trial. King Ozai is faced away from Zuko, on a piece of stone throne. 

“Jet of Lydia, you stand on trial for treason, heresy, and petty larceny. As well as this, you are charged with corrupting the youth of Crete.” Ozai is clearing his throat, but Zuko stares through the grate at a young man; no older than 19. He is resting on the floor with two spears crossed beside him, but does not make a move to escape. This is surprising, Zuko thinks, considering the shit-eating grin that has been on Jet’s face from the moment he entered. “You arrived in this city five years ago. The palace in which you sit has fed you, clothed you, and kept you warm during the winters that are none too gentle in the night time. And yet you are accused of defaming the very hand that has kept you alive.”   
  
If possible, the grin widens. It is a grin of violence, Zuko thinks. He has spent many hours by this grate, warped face pressed against the bars and scanning faces for any source of entertainment other than the stones reflecting light; or the rats that occasionally linger in his quarters. “Pleased to make your acquaintance too, your majesty.”

“It appears that you make no appeal to these complaints. If charged guilty you will be executed.” 

Jet’s eyes scan the room not in small flits, but in a smooth movement that glides and then stops- Cold shock runs through Zuko’s body; an immune system response, because the defendant is looking right at him. And that grin is remaining but now it is reaching his eyes. And then the defendant is laughing.

-

They say he came out angry, or at least his nanny used to say that. She said that he came out of his mother and the midwife dropped him. His tiny newborn body crumpled to the stones like wet papyrus and the midwife shrieked as though he were a rat. “Kill him!” She had shrieked into the night. “This is no child, m’lady, we cannot allow you to be seen with such a child as this.”

Ursa had been silent through nearly her entire pregnancy. Since the movements had started in her belly, facts had clicked that she had not laid with Ozai in over half a year. Upon resting her hand against the flat of her stomach, she made a single gasp and promptly refused to utter another sound.

But at the shriek of the midwife combined with the enraged scream of the baby on the floor, the ‘disturbed’ queen thrust herself up from the bed and shouted, “Give me my son!” before picking him up from the gleaming stone and pulling him to her breast. 

The king’s firstborn was never reported. He sprung into Queen Ursa’s arms with a face twisted like a bad joke; his left eye glassy and blind; settled crudely between folds of red skin. People simply assumed that the child had been lost and Ursa was never in a position to correct them. 

-

All of Zuko’s memories consist of stone. White stone, painted stone, the occasional warning for those who stumble upon his labyrinth. His mother spent the first months of his life down here with him; walking aimlessly along the slowly constructed maze. After he learned to walk, Ozai called for her body once more and Zuko was rescinded to the care of nurses and well-paid guards. 

In the shadows, he had to learn to discern through darkness; a harder ordeal considering his disability. 

There is only once that he is ever addressed by King Ozai. One night, the king is simply standing at the end of the hallway with an older gentleman. “This man is going to teach you how to fight,” King Ozai says, “Beast like you, if anyone looks upon you you must kill them. Do you understand?”

Zuko doesn’t speak.

“I assumed the thing was mute,” Ozai mutters, but Zuko hears him all the same. Then the King leaves him with the man.

-

One day another man appears in the labyrinth. Zuko raises his ax, the King’s words roaring in his head paired with a pulse of fear that momentarily makes the world go silent. He doesn’t catch the beginning of the man’s sentence, only realising when he says, “I am not going to hurt you. I am your uncle.”

_ Uncle _ . Zuko’s hand fumbles on the ax and it slips from his grasp. Embarrassment peels through him, and Zuko looks away. Not a lot of words mean anything to him, but that one does. He knows an uncle is family. He has not seen family since he was 10 and his mother visited him for the last time. 

While his gaze has been turned, the man has crossed the floor and placed his foot over the blade of the ax. “But others call me Iroh, if that is too difficult right now.” He is a larger man with a nearly-white face of hair. There is a sort of light in his face that Zuko doesn’t understand. “I have asked for the guards to fetch us tea.”

-

  
Jet is not the first person Zuko’s age to grace these walls. As he ages, there come younger people of the courts. Friends of the person he knows to be his sister, who brings people like moths to light. Or flame, since for all the heat she projects, none of it seems to be in sympathy with the sunlight.

But there’s something about the wolfish eyes of the eager prisoner that leave Zuko stuck. When he slinks back from the labyrinth he is settled with a disturbing ice in his stomach; accompanied by a faint sense of being watched.  _ If anyone looks upon you you must kill them.  _ Despite the fact that guards exist, they live at the very end up beyond the doors. Other than his uncle he is completely alone. 

Something has changed. When he turns a corner he finds himself expecting. What, he can’t say, but there’s something predatory in the darkness that he has always understood.

It haunts him all through the next day and the next night. The walls reflect back not stone but a bronzed face with a piece of grass stuck tauntingly between his teeth. Eyes as black as flint twinkle from the hides of rats. 

When the next week passes in much the same manner, Zuko decides that something must be done. 

Even though he is not allowed into the palace, some exception must be made by the recklessness of adolescence. The result is that the night palace is more familiar to him than to many of the maids that work there. 

He reaches from his bed to the floor and picks up his ax. Then he stands; makes his way across the floor and then through the labyrinth.

The whole palace is still. The only thing that seems to acknowledge Zuko is the moon piercing through the window and sliding across the floor. It helps him find his way through the halls to the prison quarters. After a bit of deduction he finds himself at Knossos’ highest tower, weaving through a back passage that leads into the room.

  
  


The room isn’t as depressing as it could have been. There’s a chamber pot in the corner, a small wooden table, and a bed pressed by the wall. The window is rather exposed to the elements; and the moonlight trickles over the bottom half of the sheets. 

Zuko glances down at the ax and rearranges it.  _ He looked upon me, _ he reminds himself. Then he crosses the room and lifts the weapon aloft. There is a sliver of soft brown skin peeking out from the neck.

“It’s rude to kill a man without an introduction.”

Zuko drops the ax and it nearly hurtles into the man anyway. But Jet is quick, and slides out of the way with reflexes clearly built on the field. He lets out something between a laugh and a grunt, and stands on the ground before Zuko. The ground is dusty, and leaves marks on his feet. 

“You have looked upon me, therefore you must die.”   
  
“I haven’t looked upon you. It’s too dark to see anything.” There’s that grin again, white teeth cutting through the dark. 

Zuko shakes his head. “Yes you did, you looked at me before. At your trial.”

Then he thinks about those words. He realises that Jet might not have seen him at all, that he made it all up.  _ But that grin.  _ Still. He takes a step back and tries to focus through the nighttime. He doesn’t manage to catch Jet’s movement, and he nearly strikes a punch before realising that Jet is holding out the hilt of the ax. 

Now Zuko is definitely being looked upon. Jet is close, close enough for the moon to reflect in his pupils blown massive by the dark. “You’ve never killed anyone. I would know if you had.” Zuko quivers as if struck, but Jet still hands the ax back. “It is braver to keep people alive than to kill them.”

Zuko wrinkles his nose and tilts his head. “You talk a lot for someone who laughed before the tribunal of Knossos.”

“What can I say, I was fine until I saw a pair of unexpected gold eyes peering out from the corner of the room.” 

Zuko springs back and grips the ax once more, “So you did see me!” Jet laughs in the same way he did in that room, a loud bark that bounces off the stones. He steps forward with no fear at all in his step, nearly dancing over the stones until they are nearly abreast. 

“After a while, dear boy, you will learn not to believe the words I say.”

-

Jet survives the night and Zuko slinks back to his room. There was not much more conversation between the two of them, but what there has been lingers in the pit of Zuko’s stomach. Circumstance has made him quiet, other than when his uncle has come for tea. Stories from the odd nurse stretched his language to a certain point, but the real vocabulary comes from things he has invented in his home. 

It takes a week, but Zuko can’t stay away. Prisoners of Ozai never have a defined date, but it isn’t unusual for them to spend years in their cells. Still, Zuko is prepared for Jet to disappear. 

Jet isn’t sleeping this time. He is awake when Zuko stops by the door; peeking through the wall. Then Zuko’s key is piercing through the wall and opening himself up. 

“I didn’t know Ozai had another child.” He turns towards Zuko. “There were always rumours, y’know, for what the Queen did in those few months when she lost her mind. But it makes sense, y’know, for the king to have a trapped child in the labyrinth. It’s very...  _ him. _ ”

“I don’t know anything about Ozai,” Zuko whispers. He only belongs to Ozai in name- his origins are far more carnal than a tyrant and a maiden. 

“Do you have a name, labyrinth boy?” 

He has never been asked this question before. He has only been told. Because of this, the words come out stunted, “I am Zuko.”

“Jet.” Zuko starts to back away but Jet reaches out. At Zuko’s flinch, Jet pulls his hand immediately away. “Hey, you should come back tomorrow. I think you’re pretty cool, and you clearly don’t think me boring. I mean- what’s the worst that could happen? You make a friend?”

  
  


-

So Zuko comes back. He comes with the rising of the moon and his silence. He has always thought that whoever saw him would kill him; this is far more confusing. And every night Jet is waiting in his bed or at his chair. Sometimes he saves bread from dinner and they break it together. Zuko insists he has already eaten, but Jet refuses it. “I just stay in my room all day, while you’re stalking a massive labyrinth.”

It’s not like Jet doesn’t see the scar; he does. But he looks at the rest of Zuko’s face too. He respects Zuko’s changing desire for eye contact. 

One night Zuko asks him why he didn’t put up a fight. “You didn’t even present a mild defence. Couldn’t you have said something about- I don’t know, biased witnesses?” 

Jet has a cup of wine in his hand and tips his head back. His brown curls nearly look black in the light. The moon has changed its shape and now is barely there at all. In response the stars have leapt out from their caves and burst like white berries along the night canvas. The starlight brushes the edge of Jet’s tips, but otherwise leaves him just as silhouette. “Because I want the hemlock. Your father is a monster, and if I have enough resistance I can lead the way for my family to rebel. I can become a symbol- as much a symbol as Hercules is in the night sky.”

“That’s ridiculous.” Zuko picks at his bread. It’s not as good as the stuff he gets in the labyrinth. “And Ozai isn’t that bad. I should probably kill you for treason right now.”   
  
“Go right ahead, make the blow,” Jet holds out his arms wide and grins as though readying for an embrace. But then, perhaps for the first time, the grin drops into seriousness. Zuko doesn’t like it. “But you, though. You should get away from here. You don’t deserve a life like this.”

“And go where? I’m a monster, can’t you see?”

Jet reaches out slowly, and places the tips of his fingers just above Zuko’s wrist. Zuko turns it, lets the white flesh of his wrist gleam beneath Jet’s touch. “There’s no monster here.”

Zuko snorts, “I literally have cow hooves.”

Jet shakes his head. “The only monster in this land is the man who put a child beneath the earth and closed the door.” He closes his fingers around Zuko’s wrist. His eyes still gleam, but there isn’t that same ferocity that Zuko has come to expect. It’s cool and collected like the air around them. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Nothing wrong with you at all.”

-

Zuko hopes he never has to go through the embarrassment of asking Iroh what a kiss is ever again.

-

The first time Zuko kisses Jet, it is small and light. It’s in the middle of a pause in speech, and then Zuko is pressing his lips to Jet’s in what is probably the most awkward movement known to man. 

Then he leans back. “Did I do that right?”   
  
Jet rests his fingers over his lips. “I- did you just kiss me?” His eyes are wide, nearly panicked. “This could be dangerous, Zuko. Do we like each other or are we lonely?”   
  
“Is there a difference?”   
  
Jet frowns deeply and nods. “A big one.” He takes a bite of bread as if nothing happened, and Zuko feels something sink deep in his stomach. Zuko thinks that maybe they’re supposed to fight now, but Jet is back to laughing.

-

The first time Jet kisses Zuko, it is anything but. A few weeks have passed since that fateful night. Jet wasn’t in the bed tonight, but sitting on the edge of the window sill with a leg tucked up against the corner. Zuko hasn’t spent a lot of time looking out of what is- technically- his kingdom.

“You should be the one who inherits all this,” Jet mutters. A few candles are lit. “It’s yours.”

“Not really. I’m a bastard child.”   
  
“Better you than that tyrant they call the heiress.” Zuko has never met Azula. He doesn’t even know if Azula knows she has a brother. “Plus- you actually have the makings of a guy with empathy. You care. Azula would definitely have killed me with that ax long ago.”

Zuko smiles. Said ax is now lying on the floor, a long way from being of any use. “You know you’re a pretty strange person, don’t you?”

“But of course! It’s part of my charm.” Jet laughs and reaches behind his neck. Zuko notices that there’s something slightly nervous in his air. Then Jet turns and reaches out for Zuko’s elbow. He’s in nothing but a loincloth, and Zuko finds his gaze drawn to the almost-something that defines Jet’s torso. Soft brown muscle, no lighter than when he first walked through those doors. “Isn’t the sea beautiful?” Jet’s voice drops to a whisper, “Wouldn’t you love to see what’s over it?”   
  
Zuko blinks. His sight isn’t good enough for the sea to be visible, but he can hear the waves in the distance and smell the bite of salt on the wind. “What is there to see?”

“Sparta. Mycenae. Athens. There’s a whole world- all with their own horrors and their own beauties.” He sends a soft grin in Zuko’s directions. “Do you know anything about the constellations?”

“That’s Ursa Major. My mother’s namesake.” Jet glances back and his face gives a slight, immutable twitch. He hums and then closes his eyes. Hair falls across his brow, and Zuko pushes the strands back behind Jet’s ear.

Jet reaches over and takes Zuko’s jaw between his hands. “Do you want to be kissed, Zuko?”

Zuko nods and Jet presses forward. His eyes are open, but it’s still… good. Nice. Jet’s lips are salty against his own, with a slight tang that might be blood. His face is blurry and out of focus, but Zuko closes his eyes and everything is calm. 

Jet takes him to bed. They don’t do anything, but Jet keeps Zuko there through the next day. It’s not too difficult to hide, after all. Even with cow hooves. The one place out of bounds is the scar around Zuko’s eye, and Jet avoids all his insecurities with the deftness of the cow jumpers painted on the wall. According to Jet, they actually exist. 

-

“Aren’t you afraid of dying? Even a little bit?”   
  
Jet laughs. His body is bare, with the softness of a fig’s skin. He loses weight steadily, as nothing can really sustain a lifestyle as his. Bread and wine would usually not be so bad, but his muscles have long since loft definition. Still, Zuko finds a firmness in Jet’s body that he’d never really felt anywhere else. He’s felt it before in theory- walls are firm and floors are firm. But there’s a certain unforgiving stability in Jet’s frame that keeps Zuko rooted to the spot.

“Of course I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid at all.”

Zuko frowns and curves his body over Jet’s. “You’re lying.” He’s staring into Jet’s eyes with a piercing intensity. He has no idea what a normal amount is anyway.

Jet laughs again, and his grin is soft and tender. “But of course, darling! Didn’t I tell you when we met that I was a liar.”

“But you’re not.” Zuko’s nose scrunches. “This isn’t a lie.” His heart skips a bit of a beat.

“No,” Jet agrees, “This is the most truthful thing in the world.”

-

  
The date of Jet’s execution is finally announced. Zuko hears it from Jet himself, and for once there is nothing of the brave boy that he has come to known. Jet tries to brush it off with bravery, laughing and teasing, but it only makes it all the more pitiful. He has never looked more like a boy than he does now. Zuko thinks that even as a child, Jet must not have looked as young as this. 

“What if you could come with me and I could get you out?” Zuko whispers.   
  
“Your father would kill you.”   
  
“Who says he’d know?”   
  
“I don’t know, but you’d get in trouble. Don’t lie, you know it.” Jet and Zuko are predictably in bed, a place that has quickly become a haven. It’s so narrow it can barely fit Jet alone, but it’s good for the two of them. “No, I can’t go through the palace. Then I’d have to get to the docks, and I can’t- I can’t take a boat and I sure as hell can’t swim. Water scares the shit out of me.”   
  
Zuko thinks and frowns. “I might know a man.”

-

Piandao agrees to help. He’s good with creation. On the ground he drafts a set of wings, made of wax and feathers. That same night, they begin to collect the massive amounts of candle wax amassed in both the labyrinth and the room. 

-

“I don’t want you to go,” Zuko whispers.

“I’ll come back for you.” 

“Is that true?”

“Of course. I’d never lie to you.”

-

They plan their last day around a feast. Discussions with Iroh have added clarity, and there is now enough openness for them to have a few extra rolls smuggled up from the kitchen. The wings currently peak from beneath the bed, his pillow as flat as a board. Feathers were much more difficult to find than candle wax.

They spend pretty much all of it kissing. Jet laughs a bit. They have sex. Jet tries to teach Zuko to dance, but fails.

“Remember what Piandao told you, just remember that. Just fly ahead- not up nor down. Keep going until you can see land beneath you once more. That’s Athens- safety.” Zuko frowns deeply. “But remember that we’ll find each other again. You promised me.”

“And I’ll keep that promise.” Jet soon starts to get ready for the voyage. Now that the food is pushed to one side, he stands in the centre of the room while Zuko straps the contraption to his back. It bites through the chiton, it’s awkward and ungainly, but this is going to set him free. It’s fitted perfectly to his body, Zuko reminds himself.

“Okay. I think you’re ready.”

Jet turns back and presses a kiss to Zuko’s lips. It’s deep, it’s slightly harsh. And under it all, there is fear. Deep fear, enough to make the stomach curl. Zuko pulls the fear, and Jet, closer into his body. He pretends like his heart isn’t pounding like a hammer on the walls. It feels like it’s splitting him in half. Maybe this is why some people choose to kill instead of love. Jet pulls Zuko closer by the collar and then is gone, standing by the window.

“Wait, Jet-” Jet gives the final glance back, “I’ll miss you.”   
  
Then Jet gives a dazzling grin like the rising sun. “Don’t be silly. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  
  
  
  



End file.
